Classroom Management: More Than A Waiting Game

Over the last three years, I have volunteered for Physical Education New Zealand, specifically the Auckland branch. See more about this in an earlier blog post. Usually we (the Graduate Mentoring team) run three face to face sessions for beginning teachers throughout the year, but this year have held off and decided to host two online sessions. On Monday, our session was focused around behaviour and classroom management strategies, using the below scenarios to create discussion. 

Although the session was designed for new teachers, it was a great reminder of all of the different tools and strategies we can use in the classroom, to help with behaviour management. Put yourself in the 'walls' of these classrooms, and think about how you would respond. 

- Do you think your response has changed the longer you have been teaching? Why/Why not?

- Do you think your response would be the same if they were Junior students or Senior students? 

- Have you considered restorative practice, before jumping to punitive measures? (See this post and/or this post for information about restorative conversations)

- Should you respond to the scenario immediately, or a little later? When? Why?

The inspiration for this post came about when I met my student teacher this week, and we were discussing her goals for her practicum. One of the Learning Outcomes is to Apply a range of strategies to manage student behaviour, clearly aligning with the scenarios! So I have given these to my student teacher, for her to reflect on how she would respond now with no teaching experience and then once she has some teaching under her belt, we will have another look. I think this simple activity will ignite great reflection and discussion, and is an activity any teacher could do regardless of their experience.

I found the below visual which explains some strategies that can be used in the classroom, here. In addition to these, there are sooo many other strategies/tools that can be utilised such as; 

• Tone and/or volume of voice
• Physical placement and proximity to students
• Countdown verbally and/or with fingers
• "I've noticed you aren't yourself lately..."
• Observations of students in other subjects
• Whistles
• Music
• Differentiated learning activities
• Student choice
• Challenge and competition
• Discussions and plans made with other teachers
• Activities including student interests/hobbies
  

Ultimately, every teacher, every class, every student and every situation is going to be different. One day one strategy may work and the next day it may not. But that's the beauty of teaching - we have to be flexible all the time!

Problem Solving in the Workplace

At the beginning of this week I attended an employment relations two day course (Mahi Tika 2) funded by the Post Primary Teachers' Association. This was the second stage of the first stage I completed last year (see my reflection here). The purpose of the course was to gain a greater understanding of our rights and obligations as teachers in the workplace, through scenario based learning. I left the sessions feeling like I had absorbed a substantial amount of information that is important for me to know, and to share with others, especially problem solving skills.

I have reflected on the importance of my worth and value as a teacher within my school after this course. I have thought about the expectations I need to have, of how my colleagues interact with and treat me, and however I interact with my colleagues. Sometimes I feel as if we are giving 110%, but not noticed. I also sometimes feel like I am the bottom of the hierarchy, which I think is natural as a beginning teacher. However, I have now realised that we don't need to feel this way or be recognised, as long as my students are engaged and successful. We, teachers, do need to be respected by staff and students though. So, I feel grateful for this intense course, as it as made me realise my worth, and how to resolve some possible potential workplaces issues.

One section of the course was focused around Health and Safety. I feel this is an area I need considerable more knowledge and understanding about, especially as I am leading the aquatics programme soon. I have found myself attempting to complete RAMs forms, but still have a million questions I need help answering! Some of the key things I took away from the session was the managing risks cycle, and identifying the risk values of different situations. 

My group focused on water leaks as a low level risk and then physical fights between students as our examples to calculate the risk level of the situations using the below tables. A low risk can procede with monitoring and controls. A medium risk must be reviewed and managed. A high risk, which there appear to be many more than we realise, require immediate attention to eliminate or minimise risks as reasonably practical. These tables started lots of interesting discussions, including ways to minimise violence, how to reduce risks from becoming present and the importance of a Health and Safety Committee. I feel like I have lots of things to think about after this session in particular!

I have considered going to the annual PPTA conference, as I am interested to hear about what is on the cards for education, teachers and the union in the future. Watch this space...

Planning is Not Set in Concrete

As part of my beginning teacher mentoring programme with Cheryl, we focused on Criteria 9 of the Practicing Teacher Criteria in our last meeting. Criteria 9 suggests fully certified teachers respond effectively to the diverse language and cultural experiences, and the varied strengths, interests and needs of individuals and groups of ākonga.

As a group, we broke down the criteria using The Education Council's Self Assessment Tool. This is a great resource to really reflect on the criteria, to identify my strengths and weaknesses! After our PCT meeting I felt criteria 9 was an area of weakness I needed think about further. Although I know I have a lot of evidence for each of the criteria, sometimes I struggle to show, or put into words what evidence I have. One of three parts of Criteria 9 asks;

Am I flexible in my teaching approaches?

I feel I am constantly adapting my plans to suit my learners in front of me, particularly my Year 11 PE class. I wrote an outline of lessons for the first few weeks of term, and I have already changed this multiple times! As this is a Senior class, I want to ensure students have ample time to really understand the topics, so they can effectively explain and apply their knowledge. Sometimes this means spending twice as long covering a topic than I had initially planned for.

Last year I co-taught Years 12 and 13 PE. We realised throughout the year how so many of the students had gaps in their knowledge from their previous years, especially for anatomy, biomechanics and exercise physiology (which is the most difficult unit for most students). As a department we realised we needed to be increasing student understanding at a deeper level in Year 11, to better prepare them for Year 12. Therefore, although the suggested time to spend on anatomy, biomechanics and exercise physiology is probably about 7-8 weeks, I am planning for about 12 weeks. I would rather the students have a greater understanding this year, in prep for next year, than try to smash out more units. Quality over quantity. This can be quite difficult, because we obviously want our students to achieve their NCEA, but I would prefer they achieve Merits and Excellences and less credits, than more credits at an Achieved (or Not Achieved) level.

To achieve this, I have had to have regular conversations with students about their understanding, to ensure they are ready to move on. My inquiry this year is about blogging in Year 11PE, which I have found to be a great way to formatively assess student learning, and adapt my teaching to suit my students gaps. By reading through their blogposts, I am able to identify the parts they're still struggling with, and revisit this in a different way from before. For example, I am trying a variety of revision activities with this class currently, such as Kahoot, mix and match activities and team challenges (I will be writing a post about these different strategies in a couple of weeks, but see some of my observations here). If something works well for some students whom I struggle to engage, or who are struggling to understand, I try to replicate that in future lessons.

Therefore, to continue to feel I am flexible in my teaching, I need to continue to take risks, continue to read students posts to gauge their understanding and continue to seek student voice. In future, I think it would be useful to have more conversations with students about what they thought about the activities during lessons. I often think about the activities, and how I think they went, but don't as often ask the students what they think. I have started to collate some of their responses from a Google Sheet.

Observing Learn, Create, Share in Action

Today I observed Karen Ferguson (her blog here) and her Years 7&8 in Design and Visual Communications (DVC) class. I chose to observe Karen because she is a COL leader, is our Google go-to at school and is currently part of Google Class On Air. Therefore, Karen has experience with visible teaching and learning, and the Learn, Create, Share process. I feel I am still developing my confidence to incorporate the learn, create, share pedagogy into my practice, so this was the focus of my observation.

I asked three students the steps of accessing their learning from when they walk in the door, and what they thought about it. These were their responses;

• We go onto the rotation sheet because that has our tasks. I like because everything is in one place. I don’t have to go lots of places to find my files.
• We go here to see what we have to do, and what we have to do next. I like this because if I don’t know what I am doing, I can just go here to see what I am doing and then ask for help if I don’t understand
• Miss gives us instructions and examples of what we need to do. We can also see the rotation sheet and this shows us where we need to go and what we need to do. I like it because it’s easy for the teacher and us to see our work, and the teacher can see our blogs too.

The rotation sheet the students mention, is the tracking sheet of tasks (see picture below). Students access this Sheet to see what they are expected to complete, where they are up to and where they are heading, which is great accountability, and tracking of their learning. I have been attempting to use tracking sheets in my practice this year, particularly in Y11 (see Sheet here). These tracking sheets allow for differentiation within the class, which was evident in Karen's class today. The students were all working at different levels, on different tasks, in different parts of the room - it was incredible!

Reflecting after the lesson, I feel I am heading this way with my students slowly in Year 11, but definitely need to refer to the tracking sheet more often in class. Like the class I observed today, I probably need to include the expectation to access the tracking sheet at the start and/or end of every lesson, to continue with their tasks. I suppose with the nature of PE, this is a little different though. I also realised all of the students' links are open for anyone to view, but in my classes most of the students' creations are only visible by myself and the student. The students in today's observation were using their peers creations to support their learning journey, which I thought was incredibly powerful. Moving forward, I would like to encourage students to share more of their work with their peers, so they can learn from one another, rather than always learning from me! I hope that this may engage and motivate more learners in the classroom too, particularly the students who rely on me helping them individually.

Finally, I asked students to give me an example of when they have completed the Learn, Create, Share process in DVC;

• We learn about an idea or something, then we design and make it and then we share it - usually with our peers like a presentation, sometimes on our blog.
• Miss gives us a template to write our ideas on, and then we create our own. After we have finished creating it, we have to put onto our blogs for evidence to show that we have done it.
• We learnt about different types of clocks, and then based off of the different types of clocks we had to make our own. Once we drew and made our own clocks, we shared on our blogs with a description of what we did and our creations

Although I am trying hard to include the L,C,S pedagogy, I do not feel my students could articulate how this is evident in their class like the students did today. This is an end goal for me for next year. To do so, I need to make the process more obvious to the students, by referring to the process more often. Our balance and stability lessons (see Autymn's blog, and Isiah's blog to see further), were a great example of the process. The students learnt about a biomechanical principle, participated in a practical, created a resource to represent their learning and then shared on their blogs a synopsis of the learning process. However, I don't think students could yet explain this as Learn, Create, Share. Something to work on.

Overall, I enjoyed the observation, and think that having a specific focus meant I took away much more than if I didn't have a focus.

Time is Passing By Quickly!

I cannot believe we start Term 3 tomorrow. I have completed 18 months of teaching! Time is flying by, so thought I would take some time to reflect on how I am tracking related to my 2017 goals.

1) More time for me

Throughout Term 2 I felt like I had barely any 'me time'. I felt very busy and incredibly stressed trying to juggle everything, especially with a bad back. However, since I started teaching, this has been the most social term I have had so far. I spent lots of time with my friends, rekindling friendships I hadn't spent much time developing last year, and strengthening my relationships with my closest friends. So although my taha hinengaro is a little down, my taha whanau is the strongest it has been for the past 18 months.

During the holidays I read a book about Matariki (see my reflection here), and this made me realise how much I love to read for pleasure. So throughout the coming term I need to spend more time reading and doing things I enjoy - that isn't work related!!

2) Read educational blogs

Due to my regular engagement with Twitter, I have found lots of blogposts to read, which I have really enjoyed. Some posts have made me reflect about my own practice, some have shared resources, and some have encouraged me to explore further. Throughout Term 2 I have tried to leave comments here and there, because I know how much I love when I have comments on my posts! Cheryl and Marc both started working at Tamaki this year, and have embraced blogging, so I regularly read, comment and share their posts within my own.

3) Experiment with more digital tools

Last holidays I attended the Google Summit, and one of my takeaways was Google Expeditions introduced to me by Angela. As part of the Y10 exploring substances unit (resources here), we completed an Expedition called Human Anatomy, Respiratory System - Smoking and Your Lungs. This enabled us to track down the trachea and into the lungs to look at the alveoli then explore what can happen to the lungs from smoking cigarettes (see the below pictures). The students were incredibly engaged and asked lots of questions about the lungs, oxygen intake, cigarettes and other effects on the body. So, this new digital tool was a great success, which I will definitely be including again next year! I am hoping to include a couple of others into my anatomy revision lessons with my Year 11s in the coming few weeks!

  

I have also tried to include educational games into the lessons, as I know many of our students love gaming. These include the alcohol clock game, a cyberbullying decision making game, Anatomy Arcade and Interland. I feel therefore, I am tracking well with this goal and look forward to learning and implementing more tools.

4) Attend more extra curricular activities

I have watched a girls rugby game and a girls basketball game during the term. I was able to make connections with some students who I have struggled to connect with in the classroom environment, and also see some students participate in another part of their lives, which was so great! Last year I enjoyed supporting the First XV, and hope to attend a game or two during Term 3.

Throughout Term 2 I leapt out of my comfort zone and started coaching the U17 boys basketball team. I played miniball when I was much younger, but never basketball, and I have certainly never coached it before! I have had lots of support and fun so far, it's been a great learning journey! I will reflect in a few weeks once the season has finished.

5) Include blogging into 11PE

This is part of my dissertation and inquiry process for 2017. I will be reflecting on this specifically in a couple of weeks, because our next PCT meeting is about inquiry, and so is our next #NZBTchat.

I feel overall though, that for most of the class blogging has improved their confidence and their writing. Others have struggled to post, who I will continue to work with throughout the next term. I have really enjoyed reading through the students posts, and seeing their portfolio building up! 

Bring on another big term, with heaps of exciting things on the way including teaching sexuality education for the first time!

Giving Back to the PENZ Whānau

As previously posted, I attended a Health, PE, and Outdoor Ed conference last week. I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to present twice this year! Before starting presentation prep, I realised that I had never created my pepeha, so this was my first step. A pepeha is how you introduce yourself, related to the community you identify as home and your ancestors, spoken in Māori.

I worked alongside Whaea Melba, our HOD of Māori to create my pepeha, which was an awesome learning journey. I found out a lot about the history of the land I grew up on and more about my whakapapa (genealogy), and became incredibly interested in my family connections to and with the land. Melba asked me to write out my pepeha on popsicle sticks, cut up each word and then match the words to practice putting my pepeha together. I enjoyed this task as I was physically moving the words into place and practising how to say the words at the same time. After a few weeks of practising, I was excited to finally present my pepeha at conference! 

My first presentation was with my friend and fellow HPE teacher, Mallory Bish. Mal and I moderate a Twitter chat (#NZBTchat) together, and have found Twitter to support our journeys as Beginning Teachers. See more about the chat here, and more about our BT journeys here. Unfortunately, our chats are very quiet currently, and we are struggling to recruit new BTs onto Twitter. So, we presented about the affordances of Twitter both professionally and personally in hope for newbies to join in. Please see our Google Slides presentation below, which also includes my pepeha. We also showed/taught the attendees two digital tools - Plickers (example here) and Lino-It (example here).

I really enjoyed creating this presentation and running the session with Mal, as we have grown as professionals as well as grown closer as friends (check out our costumes below for the conference dinner - the characters from the movie Up!). We were also incredibly blessed to have been awarded together the PENZ award for 'Outstanding New Professional'! I feel so proud of our achievement, and incredibly thankful. I was nominated for the award by Celia Fleck for sharing on my blog and Twitter alongside the moderation of #NZBTchat. Until last Sunday night, I had never actually met Celia before, we had just read each other's blogs and interacted via Twitter - again showing the power of Twitter! So I feel so blown away she nominated me for this award without even knowing me. Please see Celia's blog here.

Other people who have been incredibly supportive of Mal and I, and the development of the chat are Rachael, Carl, Susie, Alex, Hayden, Myles, Hanchen, Stuart, Andrew and Paul. These people have been there every step of the way, and without their help, challenges and critiques we would not have continued to moderate our chat, nor would we have presented at conference! All but one of these people we 'met' through Twitter!

My second presentation was more of a show and tell session of my visible teaching and learning, followed by a Q&A. I showed how my students access my site to see their learning resources, and how my planning is also available for teachers. I also demonstrated some ways to use GAFE applications within teaching and learning, and then answered questions the attendees had about anything I do and know. Finally, I showed how Blogger (and blogging generally) can be used for the learning journeys of teachers and students. Reflecting on the session really highlighted to me how much I do know, and how much I have learnt throughout the MDTA programme over the past 18 months! Shoutout to Dorothy for getting me to where I am today, and continuing to push me to have the greatest knowledge possible. I also found the GAFE conference last holidays to be incredibly useful for educators of any experience with Googley things.

I loved giving back to the HPE community, and hopefully the attendees took away something to reflect on, implement into their practice or experiment with!

Student Opportunities To Respond

Recently in our RTLB sessions, we have been discussing OTRs: students opportunities to respond. OTRs are strategies teachers use in the classroom, to seek or prompt responses from students. Student responses provide opportunities for the teacher to gauge student understanding, and give specific feedback and feedforward.

We were provided with a short article (currently in draft from PB4L and about to be published) breaking down classroom engagement, specifically OTRs. The key points I took away from the reading are;

Students are engaged in activities that are new and exciting, and as a result difficult behaviour is likely to reduce. I am pleased, therefore, one of my goals this year is to learn about, and try to implement a variety of digital tools.

"Frequently, problem behaviours result from a mismatch between the environment and an individual's skills, strengths, or preferences (p. 23)" So, for instance, some of my students have low literacy skills/levels, which may be the cause of behavioural issues - a genuine lack of understanding. This relates back to a previous post about the importance of considering literacy strategies throughout teaching (irrespective of the subject).

Evidence has shown an increased student reading ability from the use of OTRs. Again, referencing the importance of literacy. See our literacy coordinator's blog here.

During our RTLB session today, we broke down some of the verbal and non-verbal responses used in our classes recently. Check out our ideas in the pictures above.

Verbal and non-verbal strategies were also discussed in depth in the reading, and provided me with some ideas to implement into the future. For example, we have mini-whiteboards in the department, which could be used in small groups to share ideas/opinions in class. Or, the use of response cards such as a traffic light system (red, orange and green cards to demonstrate understanding). A couple of tips the reading suggests when using response cards, is that there is a lively pace, specific feedback and a short time between questions.

Finally, I shared with the group some of the OTRs I use, or am learning about, that utilise technology (see Drawing with the links here). This was a great opportunity to share what I have picked up throughout the past 18 months on my MDTA journey! I am yet to try Nearpod and Mentimeter, and will be using Chelsea's blogposts (Nearpod, Mentimeter), to guide me. The others I have used in my practice and are continuing to develop.

I am looking forward to trying some of the OTR strategies I have learnt about in our RTLB sessions. One I am incredibly interested to learn about is peer teaching, as I think this could be very powerful in the classroom. I have discussed with Cheryl, our PCT facilitator the possibility of having a PCT session about peer teaching, and cannot wait to give it a go!

Teaching - The Realities

On Monday night, Mal Bish and I had the opportunity to share our experiences as Beginning Teachers to student HPE teachers. Hayden Viles follows us on Twitter and #NZBTchat, the chat we moderate. He tutors AUT student teachers, and wanted us to share some of the realities of being a BT - the questions unanswered at university. 

We felt so privileged to have this opportunity and to give back to the community! So we really gave everything we could think of, in the one hour time slot we were given. Although the presentation was not interactive at all, we felt successful walking away, as we were able to share many things we wish we knew about before getting our first jobs, 'tricks of the trade' Hayden suggested.

These are our presentation points, and we have also shared detailed descriptions and examples of the key points (i.e. our planning) with the student teachers.

Hayden gave us great feedback/feedforward in preparation for our PENZ conference presentation in two weeks time. Our presentation will be focused on our BT journey, as well as the affordance of Twitter for educators. Please see the main feedback points Hayden gave us in prep for our presentation in the infographic I created alongside.

Overall, we feel blessed to have this opportunity. We were encouraged to really reflect on our first 18 months of teaching and what we have struggled with. We wished we had of had the opportunity to have a Q&A session with 'real' BTs while we were at uni, as some of our lecturers had been out of teaching for a while. Finally, this presentation opportunity reinforced the power of Twitter, because we hadn't met Hayden until we showed up today! Please see Mal's blog reflection of our presentation!

Sporadically Seeking Student Voice

Today, as I was walking between periods, one of my students (Y10) randomly gave me some praise on my teaching. I had just finished teaching her and as I walked past her she said to me; 

"Miss, thanks for encouraging us to be our best. I like how you don't get angry quickly if someone is off task, and you try hard to get them to do their work. I feel like you really care about us". 

Obviously, this made me feel awesome! But realised I haven't randomly asked for student voice for a while, so endeavoured to get some throughout the day. As I'd had one Y10 give me positive feedback (who I teach for Health and PE), I asked two other students from the other year levels I teach. I asked the question - "What do you like about being in my class, or about my teaching?"

Y9 girl (Health): "You give real life examples of your own".

Y11 boy (PE): "Going around checking everyone and if they need help and asking questions if they need help".

I then asked three students (one from each year level), "What is something you would like me to change in my teaching?" the responses;

Y9 boy (Health): "More fun activities, and more talking about the videos".

Y10 boy (Health and PE): "Less instructions, tell us what to do, but don't carry on and talk".

Y11 girl (PE): "Not worry about the naughty people and worry about the people who want to learn".

So, reflecting on this feedback/feedforward some small things I can change are the length of instructions of given (make them short and sweet), the time spent managing behaviour (focus more on the students who are keen to learn), and increase the amount of reviews and discussions of activities in classes (so they make more sense and students feel they are doing something).

At the end of the term I will be asking for student voice about the teaching in learning in their Health/PE class in Term 2, and am looking forward to their responses to see how I can improve further!

Prioritising our Priority Learners

Every second Tuesday we meet in Professional Learning Groups for full staff professional development. Our focus this term is based around our priority learners. These students are identified by the amount of credits they are yet to achieve. Tamaki College expect students to achieve a minimum of 20 credits towards their NCEA each term, so if students did not achieve 20+ credits during Term 1, they were identified as priority learners.

Within our PLG, we were asked to identify two priority learners, which we could help to 'get over the line'. As a group we brainstormed some plans of action or interventions we could put in place in order to help these learners. The ideas we discussed were:

• Speak to previous teachers
• Observe student in different subject (a subject where he/she has had some success)
• Look to previous years results
• Use a ViTaL/checkpoint approach
• Move away from TKI instructions/education speak. Easy to understand success criteria
• Whānau - might be siblings rather than just parents
• Keep big picture clear as well as current assessment

Moving forward, we described the specific interventions we were going to put into place for our two priority learners, our plan of action. As the Doc includes many names about students and some personal information, see the two interventions I had planned in the screenshot to the right.

At the next PLG meeting, we reflected on what we had carried out as part of our intervention. Please see my previous post about observing one of my priority learners. I attempted to have one on one discussions with my other priority learner, however his attendance has been considerably low this term. You can see my PLG's overall reflections from our interventions in this Google Doc. 

Today we explored and broke down the 'Current Graduate Profile' of a student graduating from Tamaki College, alongside the Digital Age Learner Standards. This ignited many interesting conversations, which are summarised in the below Google Doc table.

After this discussion, we chose one of the graduate qualities and explained how/what we could do over the last few weeks of term to support our priority learner to develop the quality. See below my aim for my learner. I am already starting to see a increased motivation, he is asking more questions, and he is tracking well to achieve 10 credits in PE by the middle of next term! I am enjoying this learning process, and can't wait to hear how my colleagues are tracking with their learners.

Detecting Positive Pedagogies

Aside from one visit to Albany Senior High School last year, I hadn't observed any other teachers teaching. I felt because I was co-teaching, I was essentially observing another teacher's practice all the time, and did not spend free periods visiting other teachers. Until recently, I did not think again about observing another teacher. I now feel I have wasted ample opportunities to do so, and in turn better my practice! I have completed two observations this term and reflected on them, taking away different things from each class. 

I first went and observed a student in Science. This student is one of my priority students (students who have been identified as achieving below the expected number of credits). I chose to observe him in Science, because he had achieved credits in this subject, however I was struggling to motivate him to get engaged to complete his tasks in PE, let alone start assessments.

I was surprised by what I observed. Even though from the teacher's perspective he appeared to be daydreaming and off task, he was reading through additional material on the teacher's Science site, while listening to her instructions. When asked to complete his tasks, he did so promptly, especially when the instructions weren't complicated. If there were multiple steps to a task, his engagement reduced. 

I also observed the student asked for help one on one with the teacher, but not in front of his peers. When I asked what he found difficult about learning in Science, he said he is really judgmental of himself, so would rather not write anything, than write something and be wrong. The student suggested to me that he did not have a lack of motivation, but a lack of confidence in himself, and a fear of being wrong. This opened up a great discussion with the student about the importance of challenge, and in order to learn, there will be some hurdles to get over.

After this observation and conversation with the student, I have tried to have more one on one conversations with him, include more group activities (as he expressed this helps his learning and confidence), and give the student words of encouragement/praise when he attempts something new. I am starting to see a positive change in the student's mood and greater engagement in tasks in class! Fingers crossed in turn this will affect his achievement in PE.

Without the recognition of the student as a priority learner, and observing him in Science, I feel this student would still be slouching in his seat at the back of the room looking sad and unenthused about his tasks. So, I am excited to see how he progresses!

Following on from this observation, Cheryl (my PCT facilitator) suggested we complete a observation of an experienced teacher and then discuss our findings from the observation as our fortnightly PCT meeting. I have been having behaviour management difficulties with one of my Year 10 classes, so decided it was best to visit this class in another subject to see what strategies the teacher used. Some of my observations include; the importance of simple instructions, having revision activities, don't try to talk over students (or you will repeat yourself), break down words students may not be familiar with (see more about this in this post), and provide students with opportunities to peer teach.

Moving forward, the final point is what I am going to focus on - attempting to provide opportunities for students to share their knowledge and understanding with their peers. I hope by encouraging students who are more comfortable and confident to 'teach' their peers who are struggling, this supports all students learning. I also think this may help put some content/tasks into jargon which may make more sense for the students!

After these two observations, I have realised the benefit of observing teachers, students, classes, subjects different from my own. I would like to complete an observation of a beginning teacher (any subject), and an experienced teacher in my department next. I found the infographic on this site, which will help me with future observations!

Restoring Relationships Through Restorative Conversation

Near the end of Term 1, I heard from some of the other beginning teachers about a PD they were receiving fortnightly at school. The teachers were mostly new to the school so were offered an opportunity to work with RTLB on site to explore PB4L teaching in practice. This is the first year the opportunity has become available, so we did not receive this additional behaviour management support as first years last year. 

I had a bit of a fear of missing out, and the PD sounded like it was a great place to discuss ideas and techniques of how to manage behaviour positively. So, I leapt into the PD this term!

The first session was about lunchtime duty - something which is not regularly discussed. I remember thinking on my first duty last year "what am I actually supposed to be doing?" To be completely honest, because no one ever actually told me, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing until this PD discussion!

Simply, we should be scanning the area, moving unpredictably, and interacting with students. Many of the group discussed duty as a role to prevent misbehaviour to occur, but holistically is it about ensuring all students feel safe and are safe in your area. This means affirming positive behaviour which is modelled, rather than always focusing on behaviour less preferred. If you would like further on this session, please read Cheryl's post (our PCT facilitator).

Our second session for Term 2 was focused on the structure of a restorative conversation with a student following misbehaviour. Two acronyms for the key components of a restorative chat are below.

I had a moment yesterday with a student where I had the opportunity to try and put this structure into practice. After taking the time to have a conversation with him after he told me to go away and shut up, I felt the chat went well. I took my time to give the student the opportunity to reflect on what happened and then explain what/why he was possibly disrespectful/inappropriate (i.e. to think about his behaviour, rather than me telling him what he did 'wrong'). After attempting to use the above steps at the end of the conversation he apologised (which I felt was sincere) and we discussed how he could have talked to me respectfully about what was going on at the time, rather than taking things out on me. He even told me he really wants to learn and he knows that I can help him, but he was stopping that from happening! He came into class today, and although wasn't where I would quite like him to be yet in terms of progress, he was considerably different to yesterday (in a positive way!). I really hope my attempt at a restorative/PB4L conversation sees long-lasting effects and benefits!

Looking forward to seeing what else we discuss/explore in these sessions in the future.